Soul Balm
by Atsuki-hime
Summary: Kakashi tries to forget, but during a crucial moment, his memories are the only things that keep him going. Kaka/Iru. Written for the 2013 KakaIru Fest Summer Round.


**Notes:** This fic was a direct response to the end of chapter 635 of the manga, because I knew it was going to happen, and I had a sneaking suspicion Kishimoto was going to do something very, very horrible and make me cry. Hard. But he didn't - not yet, anyway.

This is completely unbeta'ed. Any/all mistakes are mine. Special thanks go out to Team Trope – samsarapine, ericales, and end1essly – for their hard work and dedication to the team. Without them, none of this would have been possible. Also, not mine/no money.

**Soul Balm**

Obito dies because of his dumb mistake, and life seems to go downhill from there.

Obito's death changed Kakashi for the better, he thought, until his arm is cutting clear through Rin's chest and she's staring at him with such wide, _thankful_ eyes that Kakashi wants to die right there with her.

He was supposed to protect her, and now he's dishonoring Obito's memory as he watches Rin's lifeless body fall to the floor. She is so young and has so much to live for, and some foolish mistake led her into the enemy's hands and _fuck, this is all his fault._

Rin's body hits the floor and Kakashi blacks out. When he wakes up, he's in the hospital and the first thing he does is wretch everything inside of stomach onto the floor, missing the bedpan by a mile. When he's finally done, panting heavily over the side of the bed, he feels a large, warm hand on his shoulder and hears a gentle voice.

"It's okay, Kakashi. I'm here."

Minato-sensei's voice is comforting, and he doesn't tell anyone that Minato holds him for the rest of the night, running his fingers through Kakashi's hair and promising that everything is going to be okay.

Kakashi joins ANBU to take his mind off of his past, but it doesn't work.

Every time Kakashi uses Raikiri on an enemy, he is reminded of how Rin's chest felt around his arm – scorching hot, the bone scraping his skin when he pulls his arm out. Over time, he comes to the conclusion that everyone's chest cavity feels likes Rin's, so how is he supposed to forget?

He turns to alcohol when Minato dies.

Kakashi finds it funny how two of his teammates died with a hole in their chest, and tries to drown the thought away with booze. Lots of booze. It works for a while, but his tolerance begins to build up and soon it comes to the point where he has to stop short of poisoning himself with so much alcohol in order to black out anymore. When the hangovers begin to affect his missions, Sandaime pulls him aside and tells him he needs to get himself together and find another method to ease his tension or he's pulling Kakashi out of ANBU.

So, Kakashi turns to sex.

Women flock to him like moths to a flame. They coo about how mysterious he is because he wears a mask all the time, telling him that if he lets them see his face, they'll make it worth his while. Kakashi never lets them see, but they still spread for him willingly, and at first, it's great. Rutting it out with a different woman each night eases the tension for a while, until some of the women keep trying to come back, and Kakashi wants nothing to do with that.

Sleeping with men proves to be a little easier. However, each time he fingers their tight, hot holes, it reminds him too much of the inside of Rin's body and before he knows it he's fucking the guy-of-the-night into the mattress so hard he makes them bleed. Some of them like it, but most leave unsatisfied and Kakashi can't bring himself to care.

Sandaime pulls him out of ANBU anyway, but for entirely different reasons. When he's given Minato's son as a student, he thinks he's cursed and wants to hate the brat immediately. However, Naruto looks so much like Minato that Kakashi can't help but feel a little affection toward the outspoken child. Team Seven is so much like Team Minato, and he thinks the constant reminder is going to cause a relapse and he was getting _so_ close to blocking all of those memories out for good.

But it doesn't.

The little brats keep him busier than he's ever been in his life, and they give him a new reason for living. His team is so full of potential, and for the first time, Kakashi finds himself using something that isn't self-destructive to bury the memories of his past.

It works.

The flashbacks of Obito's last will and Rin's grateful smile as the last light leaves her eyes and the gaping hole in Minato's chest come less and less over time, and there's an inner peace Kakashi hasn't felt in a very, very long time.

It's all gone in the course of one day.

Sandaime dies, and Sasuke leaves, and Kakashi is broken all over again.

Someone – Gai, Asuma, maybe even Kurenai – tells him it's not his fault, and even though he grunts an agreement their way, he's raging on the inside. It could have been prevented. If he'd only been a little more attentive to Sasuke's needs instead of focusing on trying to create some sort of fucking protégé, then Sasuke wouldn't have left and ripped another hole in Kakashi's soul.

Naruto leaves to train with Jiraiya and Sakura is taken under Tsunade's wing, and Kakashi no longer has Team Seven to bury the memories of his failures with. It's back to booze and sex and enough S-rank missions to kill a small army.

It's not enough. Nothing is enough. Kakashi goes days without sleeping because sleep brings dreams and his dreams are nothing but reels of his failures. Kakashi wants to give up. He wants to lock himself in his apartment and drown. Drown in alcohol, drown in the memories – fuck, drowning in the bathtub seems like a perfectly viable option. Except there's someone knocking on his fucking door and won't stop even though he's been ignoring it for five minutes now.

Kakashi answers the door because he can't properly wallow in misery when there's someone banging on his door. He's surprised to find that loud-mouthed chunin – Umino Iruka, right? – standing outside of his apartment. Iruka looks half determined and half like he wants to bolt for the hills when Kakashi fixes him with a bored glare, and then Iruka's stuttering something about how he hasn't heard from Naruto in a while, have you received any word from him?

Kakashi watches Iruka's lips move and instead of paying attention to Iruka's words, he's imagining those perfect lips wrapped around his cock and tears streaming down Iruka's face as he fucks that pretty mouth. When Iruka clears his throat, Kakashi doesn't apologize, just lets Iruka in and tells him he recently received a letter from Jiraiya.

"Were you busy, Kakashi-san?" Iruka asks, looking around Kakashi's apartment nervously.

"I was just going to take a bath," Kakashi answers, wondering if the normally vocal chunin screams in bed, before retrieving the letter from Jiraiya.

From that day on, Kakashi can't get rid of Iruka.

Iruka drops by on pretenses of checking for more letters from Jiraiya, giving excuses that he just wants to know if Naruto is really as safe as he claims to be, but Kakashi is not a fool. He knows Iruka is attracted to him, and eventually Iruka is inviting Kakashi to Ichiraku's for dinner or offering to bring some beer over and cook for him and Kakashi isn't going to refuse free food or the lingering promise of getting laid.

However, Iruka doesn't put out, and that puts Kakashi out. At first, it's irritating because Iruka's cheeks flush when he drinks a little too much and he gets all giggly and practically glows, and Kakashi just wants to watch that face contort in pure bliss as Kakashi pounds into Iruka's perfect ass. But even though Iruka leaves each time without so much as a flirty touch or quickie against the doorframe, Kakashi still finds himself seeking Iruka out on his days off for…well, for company.

Months go by and Kakashi still hasn't fucked Iruka and even though he still wants to – gods, yes, he wants to – he finds that it doesn't really matter anymore because Iruka is interesting to talk to and smarter than he looks and underneath the underneath, if Kakashi just takes the time to look, Iruka is actually pretty fascinating.

One day, Kakashi wakes up and realizes he hasn't dreamt about Obito or Rin or Minato in ages, and wonders if he's been doing something differently. There's still plenty of booze and plenty of sex and plenty of missions, which didn't work quite so well before, so what's different now?

Kakashi thinks about asking Iruka, but he's never told Iruka about the dreams or his means of repressing them, and then it hits him – Iruka is the "different." Iruka is the new constant in his life, and the last time Kakashi woke up in a cold sweat, darting for the toilet to puke up his insides in disgust, was just shortly after Iruka stepped into his apartment for the first time.

_Well, fuck_, Kakashi thinks, because this "thing" he has going on with Iruka just got way more complicated.

Except, it doesn't.

Iruka must notice that something has changed with Kakashi, because their hands keep brushing together when they walk side-by-side and Iruka is spending the night at Kakashi's more often, walking around without a shirt on in the mornings and Kakashi thinks it's _on purpose_, and one night after an excellent meal and too much sake, Iruka is suddenly straddling him.

Kakashi doesn't have the patience to be gentle. He's just so glad that their finally _doing this_, and it's amazing because even though Iruka is the one instigating it, Iruka is blushing shyly and Kakashi has never been so turned on in his life. He gets to see that pretty mouth wrapped around his cock and it's so much better than he ever imagined – and he's imagined it _so_ many times – and when Iruka moans in pleasure instead of discomfort when Kakashi pulls his hair and fucks his mouth, Kakashi loses it. He takes Iruka right there on the couch, not bothering to remove their shirts and uses his spit as lubricant, and Iruka just begs for more, more, _please Kakashi_ and Kakashi has the most intense orgasm he's ever experienced.

After that, Kakashi stops bringing home other partners and cuts down on his drinking because Iruka is _it_. Iruka is all he needs to forget about the past, and Naruto comes back from training and Iruka is even happier now that the kid is back and Kakashi likes to see Iruka happy and everything seems like it's clicking in place and _damn_, is this what being in love feels like?

But nothing is ever that easy.

War is declared, and Kakashi is made a General, and that's fine except Iruka is looking at him so sadly when Kakashi tells him he's being deployed to the front lines. It's a bittersweet feeling knowing that someone cares about you so much that they worry about your safety, and when Iruka kisses Kakashi as if his life depends on it and says, "Survive," in the sternest teacher-voice he can manage, Kakashi decides that when he comes back from the war, he's going to ask Iruka to marry him.

Except, maybe he isn't coming back from the war.

Because Tobi is _Obito_ and Obito is _alive_ and he _knows_ about Rin, he knows that Kakashi broke his promise and _murdered_ Rin and it's too fucking much to handle that Kakashi can't even move in the middle of a fucking battlefield and Obito is using the memories he's worked so hard to repress against him and fuck, _fuck_, it's happening again.

Kakashi's fist is piercing straight through Obito's chest, and Obito's fist is shooting through Kakashi's stomach, and Obito's chest feels just like Rin's. They're both bleeding profusely and exhausted and Kakashi doesn't feel much pain, just an overwhelming sense of resignation.

This is it. This is the end. This is how it was _always_ supposed to end. Each member of Team Minato, dead from a gaping hole in their torso.

Obito has every right to take Kakashi's life. Kakashi took something precious away from Obito, and he is willing to pay his dues to Obito, even if he has to take Obito down with him.

But Obito isn't dying the way Kakashi is, and Kakashi slumps to the floor, bleeding everywhere and this feels just like that time with Pain except there isn't any hope of going to a better place to be with Rin and Minato-sensei and his father. No, not after all of his failures. Not after what he's done to Obito. He's going to die here and he doesn't feel anything except resigned acceptance because this is justice, this is fate, and–

_Survive._

It echoes through his mind and the images overwhelm him. Iruka's smile when he teases Kakashi about his hair, Iruka's brows furrowing in frustration as he yells at Kakashi to write his report in _ink_ this time, not mud. Iruka cooking dinner, Iruka training, Iruka listening intently to Naruto's outrageous stories, Iruka riding him in a closet next to the mission room.

_Survive_.

Maybe it's his chakra that keeps him alive. Maybe it's sheer will. But Iruka told him to survive, and Kakashi is pushing himself off the ground and charging after Obito, using Raikiri to decapitate Obito in one clean strike before Obito has enough time to comprehend what's going on.

Kakashi thinks it should hurt more, watching Obito die for the second time. Instead, he's too busy trying to use every last ounce of chakra he has left to seal the hole in his stomach and stop as much internal bleeding as possible. He would have–_should_ have–given up a long time ago, and he has to come dangerously close to dying in order to _not_ die, but it doesn't matter because the memory of Iruka's voice is a balm to his soul, and he never would have imagined that any memory from his fucked up life could strengthen him like this–give him _hope_ like this.

_Survive_.

And he does.


End file.
